Newsweek Offers Up Arrow for Wisconsin 'Dirty Tricks'

March 3rd, 2011 1:49 PM

Here's more evidence that Newsweek keeps sinking as a credible "news" outlet. In their "Conventional Wisdom Watch" box in the March 7 issue, their top entry is an Up arrow for "Dirty Tricks." Media ethics, schmethics. The honored trickster is so-called "journalist" Ian Murphy of the "Buffalo Beast" for calling Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and pretending to be a capitalist, which he is certainly not. They explained: "Journo prank-calls Wisconsin governor. But is his refrigerator running?"

Typically, when Barack Obama declared he would not defend the Defense of Marriage Act, Newsweek gave an Up arrow for "Love," with a rainbow flag flying in the arrow. "Obama won't defend gay-marriage law. White House quits its stone-walling." Newsweek defines a Justice Department defending federal law as it presently exists "stone-walling."

This sounds like it was meant to satify the hard line of the late Newsweek in-house gay activist Sarah Pettit, warmly remembered after her death for "protesting any rightward deviationism" in the magazine. 

"Silence" also drew an up arrow with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in it. "Thomas stays mum for five years. We thought justice was blind." Did they mean it was a glorious thing that this conservative didn't speak out?